---
"pnpm": major
---

JSON files in the store and cache are replaced with binary files generated with v8.serialize.

Reading and deserializing a binary file generated with v8.serialize appears to be about 23% faster than reading and parsing a JSON file. Other operations are similar in speed. Therefore, we have switched to V8 binary files for storing data in pnpm’s global store and cache. The disadvantage of this approach is that V8 files generated by newer versions of Node.js cannot be deserialized by older versions. In such cases, we ignore the cache.

Related PR: [#9971](https://github.com/pnpm/pnpm/pull/9971).
